The seafood sellers fear the 415 megawatt ship - to be moored for two decades at Saldanha Bay, 140 km north of Cape Town - will pump hot water into the bay and make endless noise, spoiling farmed oysters and scaring off fish as Africa's most industrialised country scrambles to fix electricity problems.
Saldanha Bay is South Africa's first sea-based aquaculture zone, with 16 new entrants welcomed last year to an industry worth around one billion rand annually, Fisheries Department officials said. "We don't believe it can just be benign, sitting there, because it is generating hot water and it is generating a noise factor which can affect the organisms we cultivate," said Kevin Ruck, owner of Blue Sapphire Pearls oyster farm and a trained marine biologist.
Started in 2008, his company harvests up to a million Pacific oysters a year, mainly for the domestic market, but also exported live to China.